California, for those who don’t know, gets most of its rain in the three months Dec. - Feb. That is the period that each year finds us in SoCal where even in those months rain is the exception rather than the rule.
There are plenty of nice shirtsleeve days between storms, in spite of which I haven’t written much lately. Our RV is parked by a reservoir in a valley north of Santa Barbara and there’s been a lot of rain recently. The reservoir was 30% full when we arrived in late Dec., is now at 40% and the locals hope for more.
The road to SB is blocked by a mudslide resulting from an 8 foot culvert being plugged by fire-killed brush and trees washed downslope by the rain. From where we are ‘camped’ we mostly drive out in other directions to shop or dine so the blockage hasn’t been a big deal.
We’ve also had a storm-caused electric power outage lasting maybe 36 hours, which isn’t as crippling in an RV as it is in a house. Our heat and hot water are propane-fired, and our refrigerator runs on it too. No TV without shore power, though.
Lack of power was gradually running down our RV batteries, so we were happy when the electricity came back on around 5 p.m. today. The battery on the IPad I write this on was running very low until we took an afternoon drive and charged up our phones and pads using the truck’s alternator power.
That’s us, roughing it gently by a lake in a wine-growing valley along the south coast. The hills are green, the world looks freshly washed, and there is still plenty of open country hereabouts. Life is good.
The dystopian California historian Victor Davis Hanson describes is real. Hanson splits his time between a city and a rural slum, both are ugly. The trick we have learned is to spend your CA time where life is good, we avoid big cities and rural slums.
